Thursday, July 26, 2012

In Ted Nugent's world, every moviegoer would be armed with a bucket of popcorn and a pistol

Fred Willard isn't the only celebretard to think that pulling out his toy pistol in a movie theater is a good idea. Apparently so does Ted Nugent.

According to a July 25 tweet, the Nuge is one of many who believes that the whole Dark Knight shooting could have been avoided if somebody in the crowd had returned fire.

Nugent, a rabid rightwinger best know for his guitar playing and lesser known for his fondness for bedding underaged girls, wrote: "we pray for all victims&lovedones of demonshooter in CO& we SALUTE the brave warriors who saved lives IF only they would hav had a good gun."

Ugh.

Now, even though that last bit of Nugent's tweet makes little to no sense — seriously, how can we salute the brave warriors who saved lives if only they would have had guns? — there's no doubting what the Motor City Madman means. And as sensible as his sentiment appears to be — if only someone pulled out a gun and shot James Holmes, countless lives would have been saved — that's not how the situation would have probably worked out.

Chances are, if some so-called brave warrior pulled out a gun in that Aurora, Colo., theater to take down James Holmes, he would have likely only succeeded in shooting someone in the audience. There would have been too many bodies scrabbling for the exits, too many people diving out of the way, too many people scattering in an absolute panic for Nugent's hero to get in a good shot. But that doesn't matter to Nugent as long as some conceal-and-carry cowboy gets to play the role of hero.

Now, it's important to note that Nugent didn't just envision one brave warrior. He envisioned a lot of them. Of course, that opens up another can of worms.

So let's say that Brave Warrior No. 1 has pulled out his gun in response to James Holmes pulling out his. What's to prevent someone else in the audience from mistaking Brave Warrior No. 1 for a fucking madman, a person who was no different than that asshat Holmes. Um, nothing. I mean, Brave Warrior No. 1 is just a guy in regular every day guy clothes. He's not a uniformed cop, somebody who everyone in the theater would immediately recognize as someone who is on their side.

And so we create a situation where Brave Warrior No. 2 gets the idea to pull out his gun to stop Brave Warrior No. 1. Now, three people have drawn their guns and have opened fire in a crowded and chaotic movie theater.

Of course, once Brave Warrior No. 2 starts firing, Brave Warrior No. 3 pulls out his gun, you know, to protect the people from Brave Warrior No. 2., and starts firing. This goes on and on until every person in the audience has drawn their guns out and they're firing away at, well, everyone that appears to be a fucking threat.

See folks, it's as simple as this: In a society where every Joe Schmo is armed, everyone is a potential James Holmes. There's a reason we decided long ago that the only person who should be carrying a gun is the guy with the badge and a uniform.